Through an analysis of unemployed young men in Uttar Pradesh, this article provides an ethnographic perspective on the relationship between economic reform in India and the insecurities of marginalised young men. It informs broader understandings of the temporal and spatial insecurities of young people marginalised by processes of neoliberal economic change, Exploring how feelings of temporal rupture become so intense in situations of economic crisis that time becomes a powerful feature of people’s discourse, it also highlights the overdetermined nature of young men’s temporal anxiety which reflect frustrations about unemployment, exclusion from secure adulthood, and isolation.
Informing broader understandings of the temporal and spatial insecurities of young people marginalised by process of neoliberal economic change, the paper finds that young males’ temporal anxieties were expressed in a variety of ways. This variety challenges the notion that educated unemployed young men engage either in democratic social action, or in reactionary class-based political activities. Such reflections highlight the need for a plural, flexible conceptual framework to highlight the multiplicity of possibilities beyond categorisations of age and class.
